


Invictus

by emeralddarkness



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1920s, Gen, Steve baby how did you survive, Steve giving the people who care about him fits, Steve meets Bucky, all the health problems, bitty Bucky, bitty Steve, tiny constantly half-dead asthmatic never stops causing trouble news at 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She pulled him into her lap and hugged him close. “My brave boy,” she sighed. “Your heart is too big for your body.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invictus

When Steve was five years old, on his first day of school, he’d come home early with a bloody nose, split lip, a shallow cut on his forehead that was bleeding all over his face, torn trousers, and a note from Mr. Hendrickson expressing severe disappointment. Sarah had taken one look at him and fetched the iodine and cotton, and then with ease born of experience held him down to apply it as he squirmed and yelped.

“What’s this now?” she’d asked as she dabbed. “You’ve gone and ruined your shirt if I can’t get this blood out of it. What happened?”

“I got into a fight.” And Sarah, though she’d known what answer was coming, sighed with disappointment.

“Steve, you _promised_ you’d behave. It was the first _day_.”

“I didn’t want to!” He looked up as she dabbed at his nose with eyes that were wide and earnest and as blue as his father’s had been. Sarah felt her heart catch a little at the sight, as it often did, and wondered again if she’d end up losing those eyes twice over. Steve was so _frail_ , he had been since he’d been born, and though he’d survived this long there was nothing to say how much longer it would last, especially when he kept on getting himself into messes like this. His heart was weak already, it would be easy for him to overstrain it. “But Mom, they were throwing mud at Dorothy Coghlan, and they were getting it all over her new dress, and it was her first day too. They were saying she was a dirty Irish and she didn’t belong, even though she’s just as American as any of us are.”

Sarah bit her tongue and paused for a moment before she continued to bandage him, hands gentler than they had been before. “Were they picking on you too?”

Steve shook his head. “But I couldn’t just leave them. They were picking on her.”

“Did you tell your teacher?”

He looked away, bit his lip, winced and immediately stopped, and then shook his head. “No, ma’am. I wasn’t sure he’d hear me, and he was so far away, and they were right _there_ ….”

“Steve,” she said softly, and then shook her head when he’d looked at up at her uncertainly.

“What did you say?” He'd always had trouble catching what people said, if they spoke too quietly, even as young as he was.

She’d pulled him into her lap instead and hugged him close. “My brave boy,” she sighed. “Your heart is too big for your body.” A few seconds later she sighed again and released him, voice turning much more businesslike. “You’d better get that shirt off so I can soak it. After that go take your medicine.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He slipped off of her lap and wriggled out of his bloodstained shirt, then after standing on his tiptoes to kiss her gently on the cheek had run to the kitchen, not as quickly as other children his age, but probably still more quickly than he should have.

The dim words stuck in his mind. 

At that point in his life not many people had bothered to sit down and tell Steve of everything, or even much of anything, of what was wrong with him. Most of the ones who had tried spoke too softly, too quickly, with too much incomprehensible medical jargon, or some impossible mixture of the three. He knew, from how he felt as much as anything else, that it was something to do with his heart, and lungs, and stomach, and that they were sometimes better and sometimes worse. This felt like the first real knowledge he had been given, of the type that he could grasp, and it stayed with him as a tangible explanation of some of his problems. He’d tell it to himself after he tried running, when he put his hands over his chest as though to keep his heart from escaping and felt it stagger erratically beneath his palms. “My heart is too big for my body.” It didn’t make any real difference, but it still felt nice to know, to have something he knew he could blame. It also did nothing to stop him, because well it wasn’t like getting an explanation had changed anything, really. It was a war, sort of, like the one his dad had been killed in. Just like there, in the Great War, you couldn’t just stand down and let injustices go by.

About a year and a half later he’d pulled a couple older kids off a stray dog and raised his fists – only then those kids had a friend who was standing lookout half a block away, and before he knew it he was surrounded. He’d tried to fight anyway, and had gotten knocked down, and then knocked down again when he got back up, and then a third time as the boys jeered and his lungs got tight, which was really just business as usual. Until things changed. A yell from outside the crowd of, “Hey!” was the only indication that they _had_ before a stranger was somehow in the middle of everything, jumping one of the boys from behind and beginning to pound on him.

He was taller than Steve – well, everybody was – but didn’t seem to be much older, and Steve didn’t think he’d ever seen him before in his life. He also seemed to be handling the boy he’d picked out pretty well, so Steve had decided to leave him to it. When the two other boys had tried to come up behind the stranger he _had_ acted, jumping on and scrambling up one like a monkey and doing his best to whack him and his partner around the head. They’d yelled, and hit, and finally just about knocked him out breaking the chokehold he’d probably done wrong. He fell to the ground for the fourth time and wheezed, as they looked at each other and then at the stranger fighting with their last friend, then turned and ran. The third and final bully, who managed to escape the stranger’s grip as he turned to look at Steve, knocked Steve’s helper down with a cheap shot, then turned and ran after the other two.

The stranger, who had had coughed and wiped blood away from his nose as he pushed himself up, staggered a few steps after them to stand and holler down the street. “Get back here, you cowards!” Then he’d turned to look at Steve, paused for a moment, and had turned back to face him fully, coming back a few steps again.

“Hey, kid, are you okay?” Steve had managed to pull himself against a wall and had his hands over his chest as he struggled not to cough, a thing which he knew from experience would usually make matters worse, but was still hunched over struggling hard to breathe. The older boy’s face twisted a little in concern. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Asthma.” He _did_ cough, and had to take a moment to try to control his lungs. “And my heart’s too big.” It was harder to calm it down when he couldn’t breathe properly too, which he was pretty sure exacerbated both problems.

“Your _heart’s_ too big?”

Steve’s expression went tight and stubborn as he tilted his head and looked up. “My mom was the one who said it, and she’s a nurse.”

The other boy held his hands up in surrender, spent a few moments looking him over again, then asked another question. “Why were you fighting those guys?”

After a minute or so devoted to breathing, Steve managed to find air for more words. “They were kicking a dog.”

“A _dog_?”

“It wasn’t hurting anyone. I wasn’t just gonna stand there and watch them pick on it, any more than I’d stand there and watch them pick on anybody. They shouldn’t hurt it just because it can’t do anything.”

The stranger boy’s expression turned very odd. “Kid, you sure that wasn’t a metaphor?”

Steve blinked up uncomprehendingly and after a few moments the stranger opened his mouth, then shut it again and shook his head. “Never mind. Come on, we need to get you home.”

Steve pulled himself up the wall and stood with his back braced against it, focusing on breathing. “I don’t need help. I can take care of myself.”

The other had slowly looked Steve over, rather pointedly. “Yeah, seems like it.”

Steve’s expression turned even blunter and even more mulish, and the other’s became one of mild exasperation.

“All right, Mr. Takes Care of Himself, got a name?”

He’d stayed stubbornly silent, wheezing slightly as he fought for the ability to get a decent breath, as he glared up at the other boy, until his scraped knuckles and bloody nose started to bother him. “Why’d you help me?”

“Well, it wasn’t right, was it? There were three of ‘em and you look like you’re about four.”

“I’m _almost_ seven!”

“All right, all right, _jeez_.”

They stood like that a minute more, as Steve considered that answer, and the boy who was standing in front of him, who was still looking down with concern, and who was beginning to shuffle his feet in discomfort, as though he was beginning to regret the decision to stay. But his eyes were clear and he didn’t look like he wished he hadn’t stepped in at all.

“My name’s Steve.” After a pause, he’d jerked his chin forward at the other kid. “What’s yours?”

“Bucky. Well, James, really, but everybody calls me Bucky.”

“Yeah.” Another pause. “I’m Steven, really.”

The kid, Bucky, nodded. “Sure I can’t get you home, Steve? It’s just you don’t look like you’re up to it, and I’d hate to know I got beat up for nothing.” Then, a moment later, he looked a little concerned. “Or… wait, where do you live? My family’s place isn’t too far away, and I don’t think my mom would mind if you came back with me.” As Steve’s face stayed blunt and he didn’t answer, he added, “Just long enough to get you patched up.”

Steve shook his head, took a breath, and started coughing. “I can get home,” he’d said when he recovered enough to be able to. “I’m not too far.”

Bucky had walked over and knelt, offering his back. “All right, come on then, I’ll give you a lift.” And Steve, after a moment of hesitation, had taken the offer, and stepped close to be carried. Bucky had lifted him piggy-back easily, and after asking which way he was going had set off down the street. Steve rested his head on the other boy’s shoulder and didn’t say much of anything as he concentrated on his lungs again and thought. People didn’t do this, really, and he didn’t expect it of them. But this kid, who he didn’t know, had. No, he corrected himself – this kid who he _hadn’t_ known.

“Hey, Bucky?” Steve struggled for a moment with his words. “You didn’t have to. Thanks.”

“No,” said Bucky as he walked down the street. “But neither did you.”


End file.
